STAGE REVIEW : Le Cirque Returns With Exuberance, Skill

The Santa Monica Pier and Quebec’s Cirque du Soleil are made for each other. Rarely has a setting been so right for an event. Rarely has an event cast such a spell on a fairly ordinary beach.

When these magicians of the single ring opened the Los Angeles Festival in September, instantly launching it into orbit, the feeling was that the acts were unique and the artists irreplaceable. Wrong.

Yes, those aerialists, clowns, jugglers, cyclists, defiers of gravity and conquerors of the slack rope were all terrific. But here we are, with new acts replacing acts that have moved on, old acts revamped or modified, and it’s not made an ounce of difference.

The uniqueness of this band of mountebanks is not locked into individuals. Its talent lies in its collective exuberance, the hard training and “fire and optimism” of its unbridled youth, and in its uncanny fusion of skill, special effects and sizzling self-assurance. It is Adrenalin and LSD combined. Le Cirque du Soleil has reinvented the circus and made it high art.

A man-made high art that only feels extra-terrestrial. It comes belching out of billowing clouds of dry ice (or whatever), swaths the blood-and-sweat of lapidary acrobatics in eerie or elegant lights, underscores it with original music and dresses it up in unearthly, rainbow-colored costumes. Voila .

Magick with a ‘k.’ Smart. Sassy. Snappy. Responsible for it all is artistic director Guy Caron, who runs Montreal’s National Circus School and has removed from the show most of the less-skilled Western circus stereotypes (notably animal acts), while injecting those high-precision elements of Oriental circus traditions (found also, though with a different slant, in Australia’s equally youthful Circus Oz). It’s an emphasis on less with more skill and focus, rather than on more with less skill and focus.

Smartly, Caron has surrounded himself with an exceptional team of fantasy-makers. He relies heavily on lighting designer Luc Lafortune’s swirling effects, on the dazzlingly fanciful costumes of Michel Crete, on composer Rene Dupere’s heavily electronic jazz-rock score and its superb execution by musicians Benoit Jutras, Lucie Cauchon, Stephen Poulin, Ivan Payeur and Claude Vendette. Stage director Franco Dragone, and to a more limited degree choreographer Debra Brown, have woven it into a seamless tapestry.

Or perhaps a flying carpet, because whatever else it does, Le Cirque soars. Presentation is everything in scenic designer Andre Caron’s star-studded blue and red ring. Contortionist Angela Laurier, who on visual evidence cannot possess a backbone, is not only as bendable as a caterpillar but is allowed to do her stuff on a rotating, outer-spatial platform that shows it off to the best effect and the largest number of people.

A tightrope has replaced Masha Dimitri’s slack rope and artists Agathe Olivier and Antoine Rigot are as breathtaking as their predecessor without duplicating a single thing she did.

And when aerialists the Andrews do their thing near the apex of the tent, the moment when La Andrews is flung out over the audience by Le Andrews hasn’t lost a fraction of its terror.

For daredevil showmanship, style, flair and assorted incantations, Le Cirque stands alone. Walking out of that enchantment onto the sand at the ocean’s edge offers another bit of magic. Santa Monica beach without Le Cirque will never be the same.

Performances under the blue and gold tent on the beach north of the Santa Monica Pier run Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 1, 4:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 1 and 4:30 p.m., until Feb. 21 and again March 1-7. Tickets: $8-$29; (213) 458-6566 or (213) 480-3232).